abraham lincoln giving the gettysburg address

'In addition, although immunization against smallpox was practiced in the mid-19th century, there is no historical evidence that Lincoln was immunized against smallpox before his illness.' Moreover, Goldman said, 'The milder form of smallpox, known as variola minor, first appeared in the United States at the turn of the 20th century and was unknown in the United States during the mid-19th century when Lincoln became ill.' 'Smallpox was rampant in the United States at that time,' Goldman noted. Goldman, an emeritus professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UTMB and lead author of the study. 'The serious form of smallpox, known as variola major, was the only disease that closely fit Lincoln's clinical features: high fever, weakness, severe pain in the head and back, prostration, skin eruption - plus the severity and approximately 21-day duration of Lincoln's illness,' said Dr. To reach that conclusion, the researchers contrasted the clinical features of Lincoln's illness as cited in a host of sources with the manifestations of smallpox, of the milder form of smallpox that occurs in immunized people and of the most common diseases with symptoms that mimic smallpox. However, the researchers ascertained that his illness was the far more serious form of smallpox that occurs in non-immunized people. Some of those historians who recognized that Lincoln was ill following his Gettysburg speech asserted that he was suffering from a very mild form of smallpox, one that occurs in previously immunized individuals, the researchers wrote.

Their report appears in the current issue of Journal of Medical Biography, a scholarly quarterly published by the Royal Society of Medicine Press in London.Īlmost a third of those contracting this serious form of smallpox in the mid-19th century died, the researchers said. 19, 1863, he was in the early stages of a life-threatening illness - a serious form of smallpox. But according to two medical researchers at University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, most historians have failed to recognize that when Lincoln delivered it on Nov.

Abraham lincoln giving the gettysburg address